This system has worked out great… for the most part.  The only wrench in the system is the kind-looking (please note the italicization) librarian who has evidently been at her post for quite a long while.  Our relationship has progressed as the semester has ticked along, and, in outline form, looks something like this.

I. The Introduction

The day on which I had worked out and left my student ID in my gym bag back at the office, I walked through the tunnel to pick up the first of what is now a forty-seven volume stack on FDR.

“You know, you really ought to have a student ID card with you.”

Sheepishly, “Is my driver’s license okay?

SIGH. “I suppose I can accept it.”

Book procured, but somehow I left feeling strangely… guilty.

II. The Disbelief

My initial library requests had been fulfilled, and I think I somehow annoyed her that I, yes I, was the person responsible for taking up her Interlibrary Loan Request shelves.

But I did have my student ID.

“Are you really going to take all of these today?  Have you brought someone to help you carry them?”

Now what she does not know is that I am proudly the person who can carry the absolute most things humanly possible from point A to point B.  And her challenge spurred me on.

“Yes, I think I’ll be fine, but thank you.”

SIGH.

But at least I cleared her shelves.

III.  The Return

My other big project for the semester involves a Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a DVD I have borrowed on several occasions from the library.  Long story short, I returned it late and had a fine on my account.  Fines are not a big deal, and the University even transfers them to your student account after a few weeks.  But I did not know this policy yet.  I was not prepared.  Thus I happily walked for the next installment of my presidential library to bring home, only to be met with…

“Um, you have a hold on your account.  You have fines.  Do you know that you have fines?”

And thus, a pause for me to cower in her projected guilt.

“Really?  Wow, I’m sorry.”

“And so until you take care of this, I am not authorized to lend you any books.”  Or, “You are such an irresponsible human being.  Go take care of your problems before coming back to me.”

Truth be told, she was finishing her morning reading of the paper.  It must have been a bad time.

NB: Library fines do not put a hold on your account, in case you were wondering.

IV.  The Fallout and Partial Redemption

So, after said experiences, I have been planning my library trips around lunch breaks because a very nice student who takes over when this librarian is gone.  I think I have this student’s work schedule memorized, because I now know the “safe” times to pick up my books.  It’s ridiculous, I realize.  But still, the internal struggle over “Is the lunch break at 12 or 12:30, darn it?” is real.

Today, I had to go back.  It was the end of the day, I know.  Not even close to a coffee break or snack break or lunch break or afternoon snack break.  But I need these books for the weekend.

Enter library.  Student and librarian present at desk.

Stop hyperventilating.

“Hi, I have several books to pick up” to kind student.

“Okay…. Um, I only have one here.”

Librarian kicks into supervisor mode.

No, no, no, no…..

“Oh.  Here’s the problem.  You requested this book to be sent to the Forestry Library.”

“Wow.  I didn’t even know we had a forestry library.”

“Yep.  And it’s there.  It’s been there since the middle of February.”

By now, I am convinced that there is nothing I can possibly do right in this library.  It must be the air or something.

“But, you should have a few more books coming.  You can get those next week.”  She smiles.  She smiles!

“Great, thank you.”

And I breathe a sigh of relief.  I have made it out.  But only after the book alarms have gone off twice.  Apparently this new book is from the public library system and, well, has different sensors.

I feel as if I should wave to the several undergrads watching this entire exchange in deep amusement.  ”Yes, thank you, I am the one who sent the book to the Forestry Library, set off the alarms in a quiet study area, and cannot count my library books.  Farewell, dear friends!  And to all a good night!”

All of this for a stack of books.

Have I mentioned that there always seem to be a million things going on at once?  I think that having a “regular” job might be easier because you do relatively the “same” thing each day… or at least I did.  But here the task list seems longer and more involved, and as much as you want to “check things off”, it really does take several months to ponder, research, and write a paper on feminist dress as expressed through Mad Men. Yep.  I’m doing it.  Right now the tentative title is “Unbuttoning Haute Couture: Mad Men and the Fashion of Liberated Femininity.”

Here’s an excerpt from my reading for class tomorrow… from one of the two hundred pages:

Recall a gradatio of political import, much in the news during the “Berlin crisis” of 1948: “Who controls Berlin, controls German; who controls Germany controls Europe; who controls Europe controls the world.”  As a proposition, it may or may not be true.  And even if it is true, unless people are thoroughly imperialistic, they may not want to control the world.  But regardless of these doubts about it as a proposition, by the time you arrive at the second of its three stages, you feel how it is destined to develop–and on the level of purely formal assent you would collaborate to round out its symmetry by spontaneously willing its completion and perfection as an utterance.  Add, now, the psychosis of nationalism, and assent on the formal level invites assent to the proposition as doctrine.

Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, p. 59

Sometimes I love him, sometimes I hate him.  But a rhetorician must know him and have read him.  So I am.

My students finished week one of special occasion speeches.  Today one girl played a two-minute rendition of her older sister singing “Silver Bells” to prove that she, uh, was obviously not a singer.  We’ve had about five wedding toasts, two graduation speeches, a few speeches of tribute, and even a eulogy.  They are really quite brilliant and, all nerves aside, I think they may be having fun, too.

Apparently we are one-fourth of the way through the semester.  Where has it gone?

Happy Last Day of September!  It is the best month, after all.

This week was incredibly humorous in many, many ways.  And since one of my goals is to keep you laughing, here are the highlights:

• An individual in one of my classes spent ten minutes discussing who the “they” are in our society and how “they” are capable of controlling our entire lives.  “I mean, THEY control the water that comes out of our drinking fountains, faucets, showers, dishwashers, and everything.  Who knows what THEY could be putting in the water?  ANYTHING.”  It was a great moment to watch how you respond to something like this as a professor.

• On one of my bus rides, I happened to get on a bus clearly marked “STUDENT DRIVER”.  The play-by-play made my day.

STUDENT DRIVER:  “Where should I pull over?”

INSTRUCTOR: “Right in between the sign and the lamppost.” (mind you, this was an approximate distance of like, three inches at most)

STUDENT: “That’s what I was kind of thinking.  Good to know you think so too.”

• Or, this one:

INSTRUCTOR: “Is a bus coming behind you?”

STUDENT: “I’m not sure.”

INSTRUCTOR: “Look in your rearview mirror.”

STUDENT: “Oh.”

INSTRUCTOR: “It’s always a good idea to keep your eye on the rearview mirror.”

Why am I not confident in riding the bus yet?

• We’re studying Kenneth Burke and his “Pentad.”  Instead of subjecting you to the pages and pages of arguments he has with himself, watch this clip to understand his basic idea for yourself.

I think I practically skipped to the library and back today.  In between a great conversation with Dr. Persuasion, a promising panel for an upcoming conference, a productive workout (elliptical + essay reading complete for class), multiple uplifting and encouraging emails from friends, it was a fantastic day.

Speaking of the library, did you know that as a graduate student, I am able to check out books for an ENTIRE SEMESTER?  Coming back with my four books and feeling very scholarly, I wondered where I’d put them all (if you can believe it, the bookshelves are already filling up).  This made me think of my best friend and her endless quest for finding shelves for all of her husband’s books.  It’s a long story, but this quest has really been her life goal (well, one of them) for the past seven years.  And it made me miss her.

And finally, to close out the week, here’s a quote from class today especially for all you English majors:

“You want to know why people do what they do?  Read literature.  Philosophy is too much of a reduction of human interaction, motives, etc.  Only literature can really get at what motivates people.”

Happy Weekend to all!

Live from the Bus… It’s Friday Night.

Here’s the transcript of an interview that David McCullough, renowned historian and author of 1776, gave five years ago for NPR.

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I’m Renee Montagne with Steve Inskeep.

Two hundred twenty-nine years ago, independence for America was not certain. A new book explains how the young revolutionary campaign took hold. Steve Inskeep talks to the author of “1776.”

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

David McCullough chronicles a little more than a year of fighting up and down the Eastern seaboard, a year full of defeats and disasters for the Americans and a painful learning experience for their commander, George Washington.

And, David McCullough, what was it that George Washington had to learn over the course of that year?

Mr. DAVID McCULLOUGH (Author, “1776″): He had to learn that he couldn’t fight the British head-on. They were better soldiers. They were better equipped. Everything about them was what you would expect from the most formidable military force on earth, which is what the British were then. And he had to learn that holding territory, holding Boston, holding New York–it wasn’t the point. The point was to keep the Army alive and fighting.

INSKEEP: Why was it that in battle after battle, in Boston and New York and elsewhere, George Washington seemed determined, if he could, to attack the British head-on, even though people around him saw that would be a disaster?

Mr. McCULLOUGH: Well, that was his nature. He was a very aggressive man in many ways. As a fox hunter, for example, he was always at the very front riding as close to the hounds as possible, and he would chase that fox until he got him, if it took seven hours. To fox hunt for seven hours is not only a sign of phenomenal physical stamina but of a very determined mind. And he was held back from attacking more than once, to the benefit of him and his Army, by his war council, his other generals.

INSKEEP: You chronicle the way that this man had to learn when to trust his own judgment and when to trust the judgment of others. You write of a moment of particular indecisiveness in the fighting in and around New York City involving a fort that was named after him, Ft. Washington. What happened?

Mr. McCULLOUGH: Well, we had created Ft. Washington–Excuse me–on the highest ground in New York City, at the very northernmost end of Manhattan Island, to keep the British from keeping their warships up the Hudson River. And the British had demonstrated quite dramatically twice that they could bring their warships up the Hudson River, whether we were fortified at Ft. Washington or not. So there really was no longer any reason to maintain Ft. Washington. But his subordinate general, General Nathaniel Greene, one of the best generals we had, as it would turn out, had said that he could hold Ft. Washington, and George Washington said, `Well, you’re there, you’re on the spot. I’ll rely on your judgment.’ But then Washington arrived on the spot, and he made no decision. It was one of the few cases where he is totally indecisive. And Ft. Washington fell. Three thousand people were taken prisoner. It was a catastrophe for the American side, and it was Washington’s fault.

INSKEEP: How did that failure of George Washington affect his thinking?

Mr. McCULLOUGH: Washington always learned from his mistakes. I think that’s what’s crucial. It isn’t that he made mistakes, but he learned from them. For example, we, the American Army and George Washington, were almost caught in a trap at Brooklyn on Long Island, and the only thing that prevented the British from bringing their gun boats up the East River, which would have sealed the trap, was the fact that the wind was in the wrong direction. It kept the British from bringing their ships up. At the end of the war or very near the end of the war, the last great battle of the war at Yorktown, the American Army under Washington and the French army under Rochambeau, had pushed Cornwallis and the British down to the end of the York peninsula. And they were prevented from escaping by the appearance, right on time, by the French fleet, the very same situation that Washington had found himself in back at Brooklyn in 1776.

INSKEEP: How, in the months after Ft. Washington, did Washington regain confidence in his own judgment?

Mr. McCULLOUGH: Oh, I think he regained confidence in himself quite quickly. I personally think that he was suffering, among other things, from what we would call sleep deprivation. He was not himself. His great time, really, comes after Ft. Washington, in the long retreat across New Jersey, which Thomas Paine, who was then with the troops, described as the time that tried men’s souls, when his troops are sick, hungry; they’d been undefeated again and again, they’re in rags, winter’s coming on, they have no winter clothing, and he keeps going. He will not give up. Washington wasn’t a great intellectual. He wasn’t like Adams or Thomas Jefferson. He wasn’t an eloquent, spellbinding speaker like Patrick Henry. What he was was a leader, and some men would follow him through hell, and they did.

INSKEEP: What was it that finally caused George Washington, after this long retreat, finally to choose the moment to turn around at the end of 1776 and try to attack, for real this time?

Mr. McCULLOUGH: Yes. He finally gets his chance to attack, and all hope’s gone. He, himself, privately says the game’s pretty near up. And it was a bold, brilliant stroke. It was simply a night march through a driving snow, hail and sleet storm to strike at Trenton on the Delaware with all of his might, some 2,000 men. Heaven knows what the windchill factor was. Two men froze to death on the march, nine-mile march, after crossing the Delaware, and they hit at Trenton, and they won. They beat them. And this had an immediate effect on the morale of the country. That was its importance, its psychological importance. And then he struck again within days afterward and hit at Princeton and won there, too. So at the end of this campaign, the campaign of ’76, were two dramatic American victories, small scale notwithstanding, of immense importance. They really changed history.

I love reading about people’s lives, learning how they got where they are and what makes them tick and who is important to them and why.  Not only is it interesting, but it’s inspiring.  I have a whole new understanding of Churchill’s famous line “Never, never, never, never give up” after reading about all the times he really could have (and everyone expected him to).

Once I finish this book I’ll begin to tackle my reading list to (hopefully!) prepare me for grad school this fall.  I’ll be meeting with my advisor, Dr. Persuasion herself, once she returns from lecturing overseas.  I’m sure she’ll have several recommendations.

I’m participating in a survey on the “Greatest Autobiographies Ever Written” — what do you think?  It’s one thing to write a great book but quite another to write a great book about yourself. 

Do you have a favorite?  If so, why?

There’s a reason that literature resonates with each of us: just like we love reading fictional stories and being able to find out the ending with the turn of a page, we (or at least I… am I alone?) want to understand the purpose and significance in our own individual story.  If only it were that simple, if only we could figure out what the heck is going on by staying up late and finishing the book.

I’ve been very aware that one chapter is finishing and another is preparing to start in our life as a couple.  I think it’s unusual to have such a defined break of sorts — more often, you look back six months later and realize what actually happened.

Recently I read an excellent book dealing with this very subject: what does it look like to go between seasons of known and unknown while still trusting God?  A Sweet And Bitter Providence explores the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman who stood firm even when everything around her was changing (and falling apart, I might add).  It was of great encouragement to me, even during this “happy transition” and beginning of a new chapter.  It reminded me once again that during the happy or sad, eventful or mundane, God is working.

And I want to share it with you through the first-ever Rhetorical Expressions blog giveaway.  There are three ways to enter:

1. Comment on this post
2. Subscribe to this blog (upper right-hand corner, click on “Subscribe”, enter your email address, and WALAAH, posts are automatically delivered to your inbox)
3. Do both and you’ll be doubly entered

Contest closes at midnight on Friday.  I’ll draw a winner and send you a copy of the book.

I thought you might enjoy the responses so you can benefit from their wisdom.

• E.B. White: “His collected essays are a delight. He places just the right amount of responsibility on the reader. Also, co-authored Strunk and White, so has the know-how to write effectively.”
• Shakespeare: “Cliche, I know, but nothing builds a vocabulary better.”
• Annie Dillard: “Fascinating non-fiction and a VERY careful word-smith. She likes words, and isn’t afraid to explore their meanings in front of you.”
• Nina Totenberg: “She takes a complex issue and makes it accessable and easy to understand.  That’s the hardest thing to do as a communicator.”
• “Look for collected letters, essays, etc. by your favorite fiction writers – it’s interesting to see how they construct pieces that they might not have been planning for publication, and how their storytelling skills translate into more rhetorical ends.”
• The Best American Essays of the Century edited by Joyce Carol Oates.
• Flannery O’Connor’s collected letters.  “Sublime in a totally different way than her stories. I highly recommend it! I think you might get some very valuable insight into the life of a writer–one of the best, in my opinion.”

Ah, to learn from the experience and perspective of others.  That’s something I miss about college, being in a community of learners who push each other towards the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Thank you, brilliant friends.  Keep adding to my list!

Over the course of this semester, I will focus my research on Winston Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” (or the “Iron Curtain” speech) given at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946.  Although I will address all elements of descriptive analysis, I plan to spend significant time on three specific points:

1. Purpose:
   • Examine Churchill’s stance as an oracle or concerned friend speaking to the United States and the rest of the free world alerting them of the danger posed by communism and the Soviet Union. 
   • Discuss Churchill’s recommendations for a system of collective military defense which eventually led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949.
   • Consider why Churchill chose Westminster College as a venue for this particular speech.
2. Audience:
   • Immediate audience at Westminster College
   • General U.S. population
   • President Truman
   • Response of the USSR & Soviet Press
3. Personae / Tone
   • Consider how Churchill viewed himself as having a “right” to speak these tough words to the United States and the rest of the world because of the advice he gave prior to World War II which went ignored. 
   • Discuss how he viewed himself as a spokesman in defense of freedom and on behalf of those subjected to communism and fascism. 

During my historical and situational analysis, I will discuss Churchill’s transition from his World War II rhetoric focused on defeating Hitler to a rhetoric fueled by his abhorrence of communism.  I will also consider how “Sinews of Peace” marks the beginning of Cold War rhetoric and how it sets the stage for future addresses on relations between the Soviet Union and the West.

I am still researching particular theoretical criticism perspectives to use in relation to this speech, but our class discussions and continued exposure to critical theory will further inform my discussion of “Sinews of Peace.”

Among other sources, I plan to consult Churchill: A Life and Churchill and America by Sir Martin Gilbert, The Last Lion by William Manchester, Truman by David McCullough, and various newspaper reports from the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union to provide context to the speech.  I will also be able to consult a video recording of Churchill’s speech which should be extremely helpful when analyzing his style of delivery.

My hope is to produce a paper which could be submitted to the National Communication Association’s annual conference for presentation next fall.  I would also like this research to formulate a solid basis for a potential master’s thesis exploring the progression of Cold War rhetoric from Churchill to George H. W. Bush.

The owner had the most random assortment of literature — some classics, of course, but many other books that just didn’t fit and others which were glaringly absent.

When my friend inquired after several titles, the man sputtered and explained that we were confusing his establishment for a “normal” bookstore.  He apologized profusely to her and suggested we check back later for Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

As we were leaving, I saw them on the top shelf, gleaming proudly in their red and black jackets with gold trim.  They stood above the World War II section, almost to indicate their preeminence over all-other-things-written on the Second World War. 

Yes, there they were.

A complete, first edition set of Winston Churchill’s history years before, during, and after the conflict that engulfed the globe.  And they were in perfect condition.

Long story short, these books now have a home where they will be loved and enjoyed and appreciated… and hopefully, used for dissertation research.